> Today, those fees have expired and the original digital projectors are out of date or failing outright, servers are crashing, and each service call demands a highly paid IT technician — presuming you can find one at all.
So, all those promises from 20 years ago about how it will be so much cheaper to run a cinema on digital tech, no more duplicating and distributing physical film prints, no more calling out expensive maintenance staff to repair projectors with all those fiddly moving parts... plus ca change, as Jean-Luc Godard might have said. I guess in part this is connected to a broader symptom all HNers will recognize, that we live in a society that generally thinks software is free or cheap to produce, and computer-based thingies, once installed, never need any maintenance or upgrading...
So, all those promises from 20 years ago about how it will be so much cheaper to run a cinema on digital tech, no more duplicating and distributing physical film prints, no more calling out expensive maintenance staff to repair projectors with all those fiddly moving parts... plus ca change, as Jean-Luc Godard might have said. I guess in part this is connected to a broader symptom all HNers will recognize, that we live in a society that generally thinks software is free or cheap to produce, and computer-based thingies, once installed, never need any maintenance or upgrading...